some facts, fiction and humour

RAILROAD GAUGES  .
       In my History of rail page I have mentioned that rails existed before the Steam engine was rolled out on rails. In fact the use of rails was seen in collieries and horse drawn carriages. The Imperial Romans built strong roads with stone for their chariots. In England the horse drawn carriages were widely used during early 1900s. It is said that London alone generated 1,00,000 tons of horse refuse annually  and it was a chronic problem for civic officials to clean the city of these. The very first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Due to extensive use of chariots by the Romans the roads had developed "ruts" for the chariot wheels. The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for, or by, Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
 
       The English later used these roads to run horse drawn carriages and they had to standardise their carriages to 4 ft. 8 inches wheel center,  since the distance between the wheels of the  roman chariots was 4 ft. 8 inches.  The carriages were also built to that measurement to suit the " gauge" created by roman chariots. Any other parameter would topple the carriages. Till date this gauge is being used in many countries for their railroads. A question arises why 4 ft. 8.5 inches ? This is because  because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses(4 ft. 8.5 inches).

This much for the gauge now.

After the horses came the motor cars.  Bicycles were introduced later. The English ladies were very fond of riding bicycles. With the motor cars invading  the streets, they got panicky and fell down from bikes. The horses also behaved panicky. and the carriages along with passengers toppled to the side of the streets. The attention of civil authorities were drawn. In 1865 the English government introduced " The Locomotive on Highways Act" which was later known as Red Flag Act. 

    According to Red Flag Act their should be driving crew consisting of three members. The first will control the vehicle by steering left or right. The second will be the fireman for the engine handling coal and the third will walk ahead of the vehicle with a red flag so that the pedestrians and others will be cautious. The horses could be taken care of. This act restricted the maximum speed of motor cars to 2 miles per hour in urban area and 4 mph in countryside. This was not welcome to many and protests were organised. This act was modified in 1878.

     According to the modified act the necessity for red flag was done away with. The number of crews was revised to two. Apart from driver the second man would walk ahead of the car and if necessary will assist in controlling the panicky horses. 

      Then there was a third revision also in 1896. This was renamed as " Emancipation Act ". According to this act their was no need for a person to walk ahead of the car probably because the speed limit was increased to 12 mph ! But their was an alarm bell in each car .

       This is in short the origin of signals.

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